 and welcome to the Theatre Women Awards. These are the only awards dedicated to honoring the theatrical work of women and their contributions to the field across all disciplines. I'm Kelly Lynn Harrison. I am one of the co-presidents of the League of Professional Theatre Women. And I'm Linda Vickieville-Hauser. In addition to being co-vice president of program tonight, I'm also doing a double act and standing in for the League's other co-president, Lisa Rossi. Lisa would have loved to have been with us tonight, but she is currently directing a world premiere at the Cincinnati Playhouse and is in tech at this very minute, which is a great thing for any theater professional to say. I know that I speak for both of us, when I said that it is an honor to be a co-president of the League, and we are so thrilled to have all of you joining us tonight to celebrate these tremendous Theatre Women. Yes! Woo-hoo! This is your first introduction to the League and I work. Welcome. The League of Professional Theatre Women may sound like a League of Superheroes, a valuable collection of Wonder Women. And in a world of 35 years, the League has championed women and led the conversation for gender parity in the American Theatre through programming, advocacy initiatives, awards, and the media. Well, this is... The League has many initiatives. PageNation is fun. For example, speaking of numbers, women count. The third women count report, authored by members Martha Wade-Steckity and Judith Binus, quantifies the status of women playwrights and other backstage professionals in New York City productions outside of the Broadway District. The report analyzes employment in 13 rules, from playwright to stage manager, for nearly 700 off-and-off Broadway productions for 23 companies for the 2010 through 2017 Theatre Seasons. What we learned from these women count reports inspired the League of Professional Theatre Women's Seal of Approval, which is awarded to off-Broadway companies who have achieved gender parity... Yes! We like that! ...in their highly practices of women playwrights and directors for their most recent seasons. Through the League's social media, we champion the theatrical work of hundreds of theatre women annually. You can see some of the hashtags in your journal, that would be this thing, along with all of our social media handles, as well as those of our honorees and presenters. While we ask you to silence your phones, please don't turn them off. You're really going to hear that said in the theatre. Use them to follow us on Facebook and at lptwomen and tweet about tonight's awards, hashtag theatre women awards. And please tell all your friends on social media, or those thousands, about the wonderful women who are being honoured here tonight. We would like to thank Charley McCrae, the First Lady of New York City, for the lovely letter of support that she sent us this week. You can read it, it's an insert in your journal. And now we will welcome Yana Landon, our other co-VP of programming, who will tell you more about some of the support that we have received for this evening's event and our other activities. Thank you, thank you very much. Good evening everyone. We would like to thank our hosts here at the Time Center, Prospect Theatre Company and Parity Productions for all their support in putting this evening together. We give special thanks to HowlRound, restaurant associate staff, especially Emily Chin, Starlight Floral Design, and the Wholesale Copies. Thank you also to the O'Neill Film and Theatrical Foundation for sponsoring the champagne toast, which we will enjoy later this evening in the lobby. A very special thanks to our raffle donors, whose prize packages are listed in an insert in the journal. You can buy tickets here tonight or online at theaterwomen.org until March 21st, and please do tune in for a Facebook live stream of the winners that will be picked at 4pm on March 21st. The league remains very grateful for the support of the Betty R. & Ralph Sheffer Foundation, the New York Women's Agenda, New York Women's Foundation, Jane Harmon Associates, Laura Jane Musser, Lucille Lortella State, Sonia Alden Foundation, Schwab Charitable Trust, the Dorothy Stresslin Foundation, the Roxanne and Henry Brandt Foundation, and the World Moon Foundation. Thank you, Yana. We have an incredible emcee for you this evening. Valencia Lozano is an actor, a writer, a performance artist. She is one of the original members of the Labyrinth Theatre Company and currently serves as the lab's literary manager. Her play, Underneath My Bed, was produced at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre and the Hispanic Organization of Actors New Play Award in 2010. Some of you may know her as the fierce Claudia Messina in Netflix Narcos or as Tara Delgado on ABC's One Life to Live. Please welcome our next stellar theater woman, Valencia Lozano. A lot of group hugs tonight. Group hugs. I encourage group hugs. I always have. Maggie knows that. Okay. Thank you very much. The audience is full of many past honorees, former presidents of the league, officers and board members past and present, and hopefully there are some future ones out there too. Hint, hint. Okay. Most of all, there are league members out there. Some of the most talented and accomplished women in the theater industry. I salute you all. And please salute each other. Let's have a round of applause for all these great professional theater women. Tell you a little something about the league of professional theater women. The league promotes the work of hundreds of theater women every year through its social media presence. While we are honoring six theater women tonight, the league honored two more women earlier this year. Adelaide Rooson, who received the L-P-T-W Gilder-Quanier International Theater Award. That is an awesome picture. Oh my God, I love her already. On October 23rd, 2017, and Betty Corwin, who received... That picture's pretty dope too. Who received the Special Lifetime Achievement Award on November 8th, 2017. The league serves over 500 members, and this past year alone, it helped connect 50 theater women to the public theater through its new program Theater Connections. The plays of six playwrights were read through the Julia's Reading Room series, named for the league's co-founder Julia Miles. And the legacies of three theater women. Dare I say, goddesses. This year Daryl Roth, Bayork Lee, and someone so fabulous, you'll have to wait and stay tuned to find out who it is. All right? We're preserved through the oral history program. The oral history program tapes interviews before a live audience. Those tapes then become part of the Lincoln Center Video Archives at the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts. This year, 600 audience members will hear these women's stories live. But the number of theater artists and scholars who may be galvanized by seeing these tapes in the future is immeasurable. You can read more about the league's work in your lovely Souvenir Journal. The theater women being honored tonight are incredible in many different ways. We're gonna start off with the Lee Reynolds Award. This award remembers producer and league member Lee Reynolds by recognizing a woman or a woman active in any aspect of theater whose work through the medium of theater has helped to illuminate the possibilities for social, cultural, or political change. Which, as we all know, is always important but seems even more necessary these days. Presenting the Lee Reynolds Award are Marshall Jones III and Wayne Moggins. Marshall is the... Hold on. You know what? One of the only men on that stage... No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Let me introduce you. Marshall is the producing artistic director of the Tony Award-winning Crossroads Theatre Company and a theater professor at Rutgers University. Wayne is the founding artistic director of Voyage Theatre Company and he has directed the work of tonight's recipient. Now, gentlemen, you may approach. Good evening, everybody. I am so honored to be here tonight along with my colleague Marshall Jones from Crossroads Theatre Company to... We rehearsed this... to present Playwright Rohina Malik with the Lee Reynolds Award. When Voyage Theatre Company started our play-reading series back in 2014, our focus was on international works and plays in translation but, honestly, we were trying to just find plays that weren't written by white men. A colleague... A colleague mentioned a Muslim American writer performer from Chicago named Rohina Malik. So we wrote to her and asked her if we could present a reading of her play, Yasminah's Necklace. She enthusiastically agreed and also helped us find culturally appropriate actors and she even rounded up an audience from the New York Muslim community for the reading itself. After the reading, Rohina sat down with us and she said, would you consider making me a member of your company? We immediately said yes. Absolutely. Around this time, Rohina was performing her one-woman show, her solo show, Unveiled, in which she portrays five Muslim women confronting Islamophobia following 9-11. In June 2015, Voyage Theatre Company presented Unveiled with Rohina at the Fourth Street Theatre. With the post-show discussions, including panelists from American Muslim Women's Association, the Sisterhood of Salam Shalom and Westchester Coalition Against Islamophobia, our audience was engaging in a very different kind of conversation, a conversation that had been long overdue. In July 2016, Voyage Theatre Company produced Unveiled in South Africa with Muslim actor activist Ghoshan Mia at the National Arts Festival in Gramstown and the 969 Festival in Johannesburg to extraordinarily enthusiastic audiences who are thrilled to see Muslim women presented on the stage. Rohina connected us with Crossroads Theatre Company in early 2017 to present her play, The Mechatails, about a group of women on the Hodge pilgrimage. The Mechatails was presented last October at the Sheen Center in New York at the very same time that Yasmina's necklace was opening at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. It was a monumental achievement for Rohina and it felt like a tectonic shift in the landscape of American theater. I congratulate the League of Professional Theatre Women for choosing Rohina as this year's recipient for the Lee Reynolds Award. Rohina works tirelessly to illuminate the possibilities for cultural change and to fight against intolerance, ignorance, and hatred. Her message is simple. As one of the characters in her play, Unveiled says, Get to know me. Rohina, we're glad we know you. That was very good, right, Wayne? I first met Rohina in 2010. I was at a TCG conference in Chicago. We took a little boat ride and the boat driver got lost. So we were circling around Lake Michigan for hours and it was freezing. But fortunately, I got a chance to spend a lot of time with Rohina and Crossroads is an African American theater company and she said, would you consider doing my play? So she sent me a DVD. YouTube, no, it was a DVD. And I watched it and it fit our mission. Our mission is to present authentic portrayals of people of color. And I was just struck with the passion that she had because she also performed. So we did Unveiled. And when we first did Unveiled, I was 2013, I would do a curtain speech to the audience and I would tell a quick little story about the first day of rehearsal back in 2013. And we pick her up from North Airport and she says she wears a hat over her hijab because she's less harassed when she travels by plane. But I'm an optimist. The glass is always half full. And back in 2013, I thought things are going to get better. That is why we need playwrights like Rohina Malik. So we had the great honor to work with Voyage Theater Company and present Mecha Tales. The Crossroads audience was overwhelmed with that story and it had a good, strong impact. Very strong women with a very strong point of view. And the God they serve might be a little bit different but the thing that's so important to recognize is that we have way more in common than we do differences. So we are proud on behalf of the League of Professional Theater Women to present the Lee Reynolds Award to Miss Rohina Malik. Thank you so, so much. My heart is so full right now. This means the world to me. I grew up in London, England and I knew from a young age that I was a theater artist and there were a lot of voices that would say to me, you can't because your skin is brown. You can't because you're a woman. You can't because you're Muslim and you can't because you cover your hair. I'm excited to tell you that I proved all those people wrong and I was able to prove those people wrong because of incredible people in my life like my mother and my father and my sisters and my husband Nabil and my four beautiful children. People like Wayne and MJ who are standing right here on a stage full of women. We have a few good men on stage too. I want to thank the city of Chicago where my career began and people like Anne Filmer in the 16th Street Theater, Chicago Dramatists, American Blues Theater. I want to thank Wayne and MJ, Crossroads Theater Company, Charles and Michael who are here tonight. I want to thank Crossroads Theater Company, Voyage Theater Company. These are two theater companies that not just produced my work. They nurtured me and gave me an East Coast artistic home. I am so, so grateful to them. My work deals a lot of the time with hate crime and for hate crime to happen, two things need to be present. Negative stereotyping about a group of people and degrading language. And if those two things are left unchallenged, the result can be a murder. I have found that theater is a powerful tool to combat hate crime, stereotyping, degrading language by telling our stories on stage. We are doing important work because theater has the power to remind us of our shared humanity. It has the power to smash stereotypes. And I want to thank every person in this room who is an artist that creates theater, whether you are a playwright, whether you are a producer, director, or my favorite actors. I want to give a shout out to Inez and Nambi who are here tonight to amazing actors. Actors are the most important people in our society and we must do everything to nurture and protect them. Thank you very, very much. And that was just the first award. Good luck keeping it together, people. The Ruth Morley Design Award was initiated in 1998 in honor of costume designer Ruth Morley, one of the profession's leading designers for theater and film, who also served on the league's board of directors. The recipient of this award also receives a framed original print of one of Ruth Morley's designs. She's very excited about this. She keeps talking about it. I mean, it's like, alright, already. You got a framed award. I mean, you're making everyone else feel not special. The award is given annually to an outstanding female theater designer in the field of costumes, scenery, lighting, sound, or special effects. To present tonight's Ruth Morley Award, we have Shelly Butler. Shelly has over 30 Broadway, off-Broadway and regional credits and has worked extensively with writers on new plays and musicals. Evening. It is an honor to be here with all of you. I am especially excited that the league has decided to honor a sound designer. Yes. As a director, we find this element to be one of our most powerful tools, and it is often under-recognized. So it's exciting to recognize it today, especially in cricket. If you've ever met cricket, you can probably intuit that she's the ideal collaborator with whom to spend your dinner break during tech. Over a nice meal and glasses of wine, you'll sit and inevitably solve that impossible moment in your show. Or you'll talk about everything besides the play and inevitably solve that impossible moment in your show. Cricket is dramaturgical in her approach to sound design. She's a lightning-quick programmer. She is exquisitely precise in her timing. And in addition to her artistry as a designer, cricket is actively involved and incredibly generous in giving back to her community. She also plays a role in furthering a broader understanding of the importance of sound and sound design, something which even our largest award organizations can sometimes stand to be reminded of. At a national level, she's a founding board member and a western rep for the theatrical sound designer and composers association. On a regional level, she's the western region secretary for USA Local 829. And in LA, she sits on the Ovation Rules Committee. One might wonder how cricket has time to do all of these things amidst her packed docket of designing shows. But she finds the time because she views the greater theater community as her family. And she is always looking for ways to serve that family on a larger level. I am honored to have worked with cricket. I cannot wait to work with her again. It is my pleasure to introduce you to my friend and collaborator, Cricket Myers. I'll move it up a little bit. Good evening and thank you so much. I wish to say thank you to the League of Professional Theater Women for honoring me with the Ruth Morley Award and bringing recognition to the contributions that women make to theater. As a woman, I feel extraordinarily grateful that I get to follow my passion and do what I love every day. Moreover, I can't think of a better honor than to have my work recognized by my fellow colleagues. I'm driven by the creative process. It nourishes me. When I answer the phone or open an email with someone offering me work, my heart skips a beat. The theater is my community. It is my extended family. I spend every day surrounded by the creative talents of my colleagues and my friends. There is no greater joy in the world for me than to sit down with a group of artists over a glass of wine and celebrate our story and collaborate to tell our story. I love this community and I'm grateful to be a part of it. So I look for ways to support and give back to this community. One of the ways I do this is by supporting the next generation of designers. As I travel back to my first years out of school, I'm so grateful for the amazing support system I had from John Gottlieb and Drew Dazelle, who hired me as their assistant right out of school. They introduced me to their colleagues so that I could grow my own network. Michael Roth, who took me along when his show transferred to Broadway, so I got the opportunity to join the union. My desire is to give other young designers the support that they need as they venture out into the world. I do this in part by serving as a founding board member of the Theatrical Sound Designer and Composers Association. We create a sense of community and function as a resource for those who want to learn more about sound and we learn from each other. Amazing mentors have guided me through these hard years, teaching me what I needed to know as I designed shows that grew in size and scope. I learned how to give and receive respect professionally. Everyone from the artistic director to the person running cables during your load-in deserves to be treated with kindness and respect. Every job needs to be valued because we create these shows together. We're a team. There are too few women in theater and there are too few women in design. Many young women studying their craft, they walk away before they get a chance to get established. We must welcome them and we must take a professional stand with them to minimize the brutal atmosphere for any young artist. We must share and inspire them, help them push through those difficult years as they master their art. Thank you again not only for this exciting evening and this wonderful award, but for the encouragement that this league gives to young designers that our profession so desperately needs. I'm so proud to be here with all of you tonight. You will get that later. The League of Professional Theater Women's Special Award is given to a remarkable theater woman for her service to the league and to her field. To present this remarkable woman, who's very surprised she's getting this award, I'll let her talk about that. She's a critic. That's the problem. To present this remarkable woman with her award, we have the likewise remarkable Romatory. I mistakenly thought, I knew. I was like, oh, that's how I know you. Okay, I watch you and you are a goddess as well. Truly an inspiration, truly. She's an Emmy Award winner who is celebrating her 26th year at New York One, New York's popular cable news channel where she's an anchor and a theater critic. Thank you so much. This is so wonderfully organized. And obviously women put this thing together. I do have to say we women critics are an endangered species and it really is a thrill for me to be able to celebrate one of our own kind tonight. I also have to say at the outset we are not the enemy, contrary to what so many people assume about critics. We really do love the theater. I just have to take you back to 1990 and I'm going to tell you a story and Linda doesn't even know this but my husband wrote a play that was being produced at the Apple Corps Theater which was the predecessor of the Atlantic Theater on West 20th Street back then. It was actually the last show that they produced before it became the Atlantic. And it was a two-character drama. It was a love story and it was semi-autobiographical and it involved a marine during the Vietnam War in Okinawa and there was also this young woman that the marine fell in love with. The reviews came out and they were wonderful. Linda did not review it, I should point that out but there was one male critic who departed from the West and what he said just floored me. He said the play was very unrealistic because Okinawan women are not that pretty and it just blew me away. I can't believe that that would be written and he could get away with that. So I was so furious and I needed to vent and somehow I had always admired Linda. I didn't know her at all, she didn't know me at all but I loved her writing and I thought if anybody could commiserate with me on this it would be Linda Weiner. So I wrote to her, I sent her a copy of the review and I said could you please write something for us in your column. Well to my great surprise Linda wrote back to me right away and I know if you remember this but she said I sympathize with you on this but I choose not to get into a pissing match with another critic and obviously that was the wise thing to say. We critics are not in the business of criticizing each other even though some of us would like to that episode spoke volumes about this wonderful woman because she's very thoughtful and she's very principled and besides being an excellent critic she is a wonderful soul and I have to point that out because oftentimes those two are mutually exclusive particularly in our business some have talent, some have heart but not always at the same time she merges the two of them. Now I don't know if all of you folks are aware of this but she made a very bold move last year she decided to leave Newsday where she had worked as the chief theater critic for 30 years but it also meant she was walking away from a lifetime career as a professional theater critic that spanned 48 years. You look at her that seems hard to believe doesn't it? But she defined a theatrical standard for many generations and you should also know that she championed and made a point of championing women great women artists and I would particularly say playwrights, directors and designers so it's a loss that we don't have this voice anymore but her departure I would have to say I regard it as a personal protest against the dumbing down encroachment of social media on our profession. Theater criticism has really kind of sadly turned into a free-for-all where every voice is equally valid that you see on the internet and the more studied voices are drowned out by all that cyber noise. Linda put it best she said we critics are reduced to click chasers did I say that correctly? Click chasers and she's absolutely right it's not about how many people agree with you or whatever it's about a studied judgment about a particular piece of work and we need more of that, not less so I don't know all of this trend is going to lead but to be deprived of Linda's insightful critiques is kind of a tragedy in and of itself so here's to Linda's next act and I have no doubt that she can take on any man, woman or beast and outpiss them all she so chooses it's her decision anyway it is my great pleasure to present the League of Professional Theater Women Special Award to the remarkable Linda Weiner you goodbye can you imagine an award for a critic what a concept shamelessly thrilled about this special award from the League particularly because this is the group responsible for one of the most satisfying projects in my almost 50 year career it's not over by the way I'm on a gap year I'll be back all the brightest students take a gap year but I was talking about this project is the League of Professional Theater Women produced 65 half hour oral histories for television and I was the host of that and had more fun and learn more than I had in many late night nail biting deadlines for bad musicals okay, nail biting for good musicals too they both make you nervous but part of those shows gave me the possibility to interview Angela Lansbury I sat next to her and she sang the little ditty the jingle from Murder She Wrote and she did this oh, there's a corpse under your chair and I got to talk to Edward Albee because he was so great I said would you be the only man who's ever been interviewed by the women in theater and he liked the idea and it was because I had interviewed so many remarkable actresses I think I have to say it in that case who talked about the importance of all these characters in their careers that he wrote the most complicated women so I thought well let's just do a show about all these women and my husband said I looked as if I was going to lean over the table and lick his face and I also got the chance to interview to do what I believe was the last interview with Wendy Wasserstein and I got to tell her how her first produced play Uncommon Women and Others literally changed my attitudes about the theater I had been reviewing theater for a number of years by then and it was the late 70s and I was at the Chicago Tribune and one night I went to a neighborhood theater and saw a play by somebody I'd never heard of and it turned out to be by this woman Wendy Wasserstein and I was shocked to realize that I had never before seen a play with characters who could have been friends of mine that I had even though I had seen so many plays by then I had never noticed that they were all about men or about men's attitudes about women and it really didn't make the play better or worse what it did was it told me how really important it was that women write plays and tell our stories and that what an honor it was to be a woman who was able to sit there and learn so much from it I moved from Chicago to New York in 1980 I had another shock, not quite so pleasant I came from a city where there were many a real tradition of strong women voices and I came to New York and I sat there in my aisle seat and I looked down the aisle and it was all men and there were no women critics of First String for I'd say the first 30 years that I was here I was the only First String woman theater critic at any newspaper in the Tri-State area that has changed somewhat I didn't like being the mascot at the New York Drama Critics Circle but I wished there were more of us and slowly we've gotten more and more critics unfortunately there are fewer and fewer papers for women to work at but I do think that this is a kind of remarkable time for women whether it has to do with journalism or not and I went through my, I have a folder that I've been keeping for years and years it's scrawled women on it and I had all these clips that I've been saving since I started in 1969 and I found a New Yorker cartoon from 1992 and it was a New Year's party and there was a grumpy husband who said to his wife while holding up a glass of champagne he said just one more minute and the goddamn year of women will be over and I have to say not this time Mr. not this time thank you hashtag speechless I had no idea that there were so few women critics I mean of course yes I didn't see any female names but I didn't really notice it hashtag you too get smarter the Josephine Abadie Award is given in memory of director and artistic director Josephine R. Abadie who is a leader of the nonprofit theater movement in the United States the award is given to an emerging director, producer or creative director of a work of cultural diversity who has worked in the professional theater for at least five years presenting this award is Karen Kandel she's so gorgeous the co-artistic director of the New York City based theater company Mabu Mines Karen is a United States artist fellow and one of six artists in the U.S. to receive the Audrey Skerbal Kennis Time Grant I just want to say that it is exhilarating to be here at an event that recognizes and honors women in the theater it's just so exciting and I'm thrilled to have been asked to present an award to a woman I truly love and respect she and I met a little over two years ago and we discussed working on a play called The Assignment it was still in development and it was inspired by real-life events and dealing head-on with the tragedy of gun violence and the toll it takes on perpetrators and victims from the moment we met I knew that I could trust her with my heart yep, and with my art I felt that we had known each other for our whole lives she is a holistic practitioner of the art of theater everyone's input is valued and celebrated and in this case especially since the extraordinary woman on whose experiences the play is based was intimately involved and when things got crazy which they always do when you're developing a new and demanding piece this woman offered a safe haven she allayed fears and she maintained the quintessential necessity of all creative work it is the freedom to take risks and houses on the moon the theater company that she co-founded is a perfect reflection of this approach to theater making and in recognition of her contribution to theater that truly matters that alters lives and helps bridge the gap between the knowable and the unknowable I am pleased to present the Josephine Abadie Award to the eternally gorgeous Emily Joy Weiner she's my personal and professional hero by the way completely so it's an honor and a pleasure to be here tonight I fell in the forever kind of love with theater when I was six and my parents had the good foresight to enroll me in a children's troupe called the Freelance Players which was founded and run by a magnificent woman named Kippy Dewey aside from having the greatest name on the planet she had this extraordinary spirit some people may have called her a hippie but to me she was just pure openness she was like this beautiful sponge that soaked up everyone and everything that she connected with and she taught me empathy at a very young age when I didn't know what that meant and my very early years with her made a very deep impact on me I remember discovering that it's the things that make us different from one another that are the most interesting, most exciting in life a student of mine in the Bronx just recently asked me what theater means to me and without thinking I said freedom and I know that that is deeply connected to my early years with Kippy in 2001 I co-founded Houses on the Moon Theater Company with Jeffrey Solomon and we were creating, developing a piece about LGBT youth and educators and as part of our research we were interviewing a lesbian teenager in New Haven and asking her about her role models well she had none and she said it's like trying to imagine your future taking place on the Moon how can I picture what my house would look like on the Moon I've never been to the Moon nobody's ever tried to build a house at such low gravity how do I know whether to picture it on the surface or floating trees and grass or just rocks this metaphor it spoke to us and eventually named our organization for me it really represented everything I ever wanted to do with my life which was investigate unchartered unknown territory do what I can to create a safe space when it doesn't exist and make something really cool out of it I want to thank the League of Professional Theater Women for including me here tonight this particular award focusing on the creation of multicultural works means a great deal to me it really goes to all of the individuals that have trusted in me enough over the years to share their very human and often painful stories last spring during our production of the assignment starring the inimitable Karen Kandel I looked around and saw the most diverse audience I have ever seen in a theater ranging from students from suspension center sites from all the boroughs many first time theater goers to traditional Broadway going audiences and everything in between and I felt extremely proud and I felt successful so I can say that I am committed to listening and to doing the best that I can to creatively share these stories with the rest of the world so there is no better way for both personal and community growth I just need to say a few thank yous before I go firstly to Jeffrey Solomon my co-founder and longtime creative partner I'm eternally grateful that we met Houses on the Moon would not exist without Jeff and he has inspired me as a human and an artist since the day we met to Jane Dubin who many of you know here tonight and who also sits on my board of directors and whose work in this field I admire greatly Jane embraced houses from the very first moment she saw our work eight years ago and has been a total force of nature ever since and Jane I just want you to know that you're believing in me and in Houses goes a very long way to Cheryl Weisenfeld my mentor and friend your guidance is invaluable to my amazing lifelong friends I depend on you guys every day to my sisters Sarah and Heather and my parents Sharon and David your unconditional love and support has informed my work in ways that I know you're not aware of and to my partner in life and love Daniel Perla thank you for your encouragement and for always helping me keep it in perspective on a daily basis to all of you here tonight I'm very grateful women are awesome just saying in April 1999 LPTW received a bequest from the Lucille Lortel Estate to establish an endowment to fund an award and grant which would be given annually to an aspiring woman in any discipline of theater who exemplifies great creative promise and deserves recognition and encouragement this year's award will be given to director Adrian Campbell Holt and the grant will be awarded to Ms. Campbell Holt's company Colt Core presenting this award is Celia Keenan-Bolger a paragon of style just saying I couldn't help it who received multiple drama desk awards and Tony nominations most recently for her work in glass menagerie on Broadway for Florensia to say that I'm some kind of style icon is like Mike can go home now I'm so happy to be here tonight this is just incredible evening and there are so many women in this room that I respect and I'm just really happy to be here particularly because I care about this next honoree so much I first met Adrian Campbell Holt in a rehearsal room at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2009 and there were I don't know on the first day of rehearsal probably about 30 of us and there were only three women in the room and she was the only one that was on the other side of the table with the rest of the creatives and she almost immediately proved herself to be really smart and curious and observant but she also didn't talk a lot and she just sort of let everybody do their work but when she would talk everybody stopped and listened to what she had to say we bonded almost immediately over our hyphenated last names and our inner city public school education and our love of Beyonce duh and since our time in Mahoya she founded one of my favorite theater companies in the city of Coldcore where she's directed eight world premieres four of which were written by women one that was by a trans playwright and three by men she's directed all over the country most recently in Seattle developing a new musical afterwards that has an entirely female creative team and in April she's going to direct the world premiere of Emilia Roper's Zurich first collaboration with New York Theatre Workshop but I don't really want to talk about her credits that much because you can read about them in your program or look her up online what I do want to talk about is lady directors and specifically lady artistic directors because these women are all over this room and all over our city and they leave this enormous legacy and I've been thinking about them the ones who have Broadway theaters now men have a theater club in second stage and I was thinking about those women who have directed their theaters and how I wonder if they had to sublimate a part of themselves and maybe even act more like men so that they would be taken seriously and so that they could get some things done and how grateful I am to those women for carving out that space so that in 2018 someone like Adrian can exist and lead from a place that is so inherently female and what she brings to our rehearsal room and who she is she is a collaborator at heart she cares deeply about representation in her productions she's a really good listener and a great advocate for characters and she brings out the feminine energy in the room and I just think we need a lot more rooms with a lot more feminine energy these days and she's the kind of unique artist who is as imaginative as she is intelligent she makes me feel really proud to be a part of this theater community and she makes me feel really hopeful about where we're going I am so proud to introduce you to my friend and wonderful artist Adrian Campbell Holt Real tears, real feminine tears Thank you to the League of Professional Theater Women for recognizing my work with this award to seal your free generous introduction and to join SIA for hosting Thank you to Lisa McNulty and Jenna Katz Siegel of the WP and Dina Janis of the Dorset Theater Festival for being among the first artistic directors to hire me for full productions and to my colleagues at Coltcore, Amy Ashton and Erica Rottstein Also to my mom Meg Campbell and my late grandmother Ruth Mary Picard Campbell for always setting such vivid examples of leadership and strength I fully took for granted that those traits were cultivated and valued first and foremost in all women Congratulations as well to Felicia, Linda, Cricket, Emily and Rohina It's an honor to be in your company I have to confess I really struggled with what to wear this evening At 7.55 p.m. last night I was wandering through Macy's trying to understand who all those gowns are for and what these wild trends and intimate apparel mean I had no idea that patting shapers have gone mainstream When I was thinking probably too much about what I wanted to convey with my attire I decided to shoot for that old trifecta Strength, smarts, beauty But how? Emily emphasized with Obama's idea of decision fatigue around what he should put on each day He just wears the same suit every day This challenge reminded me of a scenario that transpired over at Frozen that feels apt In Denver tryouts, Elsa ended the show summoning her strength barefoot and in a negligee In the frozen tundra that doesn't sound right to me Not surprisingly, given this national moment of reckoning the decision was made to change Elsa's costume to pants and snow boots These decisions have consequences Frozen is poised to do pretty well and I think a lot of young people are going to learn what power looks like from watching Elsa and Anna in action Thank goodness for the wise insights of book writer Jennifer Lee lyricist Kristen Anderson Lopez as well as the two female stars Casey Levy and Patty Muran I'm sure they had something to do with that decision As theater artists, we are storytellers and influencers and we have a lot to say Our work collectively reaches millions of people Every decision we make matters We are all participating in the cultural moment that is inspiring a groundswell of new feminist language The future is female, resist and yet she persisted, times up reclaiming my time, inclusion writer overlooked, the list goes daily These words are an expression of a fierce movement and they are entering the vernacular Our job, the people in this room is to keep telling stories that put dynamic women at the center and to keep challenging the status quo of what those women look like at every stage of the process from hiring to casting to costuming to marketing image matters When will we have female Hamilton's and Burr's When will there be plays and musicals about Seneca Falls, Ida B. Wells or Rosa Parks When will professional theater women earn equal pay and the opportunities everyone of us in this room have seen white men routinely receive Five short years ago, Broadway saw an historic 13 new plays grace its stages in one season Just imagine if all of them had been written by women instead of by men What an impact that would have made The tide is shifting though Men and women are spending money on shows that are seriously considered too small or intimate and we're calling bullshit on those words as code for women's stories Nobody can argue with facts and figures, right? We are the storytellers and the story isn't going to change without us working fast and furiously together Yes Elsa, it's freezing out there but thank God you're not barefoot in a nightie In here we draw warmth and strength and together let's go out whether we're in power suits or snow boots gowns or pink knit pussy hats we're going to push each other and the culture forward Our final award of the evening is the Lifetime Achievement Award given to a woman who first of all got stuck in traffic Okay, so deal with it She really needs no introduction Will, however, be introduced by Jocelyn Beo Jocelyn, do you want to come down? Yes! Oh, is a Ghanaian American writer and performer from New York whose theater credit... You know this, I'm going to tell about it whose theater acting credits she's an actress and a writer Her acting credits include The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime on Broadway and Everybody at the Signature Theater for which she was nominated for a Lortel Award There's a lot of achievements so hold your applause because, yeah Jocelyn is also a playwright who recently lauded... who was recently lauded for her play School Girls or the African Mean Girls Play Thank you so much I am so honored to be here tonight and so unclear about how I got this job in presenting this next award This woman is truly one of my sheroes and as a young child I've memorized nearly every word she's uttered on television so big shout out to the universe because I've been preparing for this moment since the 1980s As I sat down to write this I reached out to one of my dearest friends you all may know her the lovely actress and singer Kondola Rashad and I asked her what are three words she would use to describe her mother and she said she is clear she is regal and she is legendary I know, right? because three of us would use those words to describe our mother It is true that Ms. Rashad's clear and assured sense of self is what led her to study theater at Howard University and it was clear that she met business graduating Magna Cum Laude and her familiarity and persistence led her to New York City where she became known for her early stage work on Broadway in The Wiz Dream Girls, Jelly's Last Sham and Into the Woods later, winning a Tony Award for Best Performance by an actress in a play for her performance in the 2004 revival of A Raisin in the Sun becoming the first black woman to ever win in this category If it is not obvious when she walks into any room her regal essence shines both on and off stage With ease, she's commanded both language and velocity in things like Cymbaline, Bernada Alba, Zoo Man and the Sign, Out on a Hot Tin Roof, Gem of the Ocean, August Osage County, and Euripides's Medea In fact, she is so regal that when she attended a recent performance of my play School Girls or the African Mean Girls play several of my cast members texted me the queen is at our show and I knew exactly who they were talking about and one can only describe her indelible mark in theater as a legendary not only does her body of work reflect that but I will never forget the awestruck state she left me and the audience in Tarek McCraney's play Head of Passes only a living legend could perform a 45 minute monologue and make it feel like a master class and her talent in theater extends past performance she is also an esteemed director helming productions of Fences, Autumn, and Immediate Family to name a few in a published performer in film and television as well she is quite simply goals but Akele's aside what makes her most special is that she is mother a sister a friend and as Kondola rightly describes is clear she is regal and she is legendary and many of us in this room and all over the world namely me the little African girl who watched the television with starry eyes in wonder of her talent she is the embodiment of an icon so it is my honor to present the esteemed Miss Felicia Rashad with the League of Professional Theater Women Lifetime Achievement Award my daughter thinks regal she never talks to me like that honored, needless to say and humbled by this recognition yes to receive a lifetime achievement award from the League of Professional Theater Women come on truthfully my entire career has been nurtured by women it began in my home with my mother Vivian Ayers poet cultural activist founder of Maynard Institute Heritage nurtured in elementary school by Mrs. Brown Mrs. Woodruff on through high school and certainly at Howard University with Professor Vera Katz as one of the finest acting instructors that I know and in coming to New York I must say I encountered one female director after a number of years and that was Seanal Perry mm-hmm but now there's so many and when women come together there is magic especially when we come together in support and in recognition of one another I was introduced to this organization by a dear friend of mine who was a former member and that was Miss Billy Allen Henderson and I loved most about Billy was that she always understood the greater importance of everything and in talking about this organization what I received from her was what a great and monumental movement this was not in one upsmanship not in the spirit of up in your face men get out but in recognition of our inherent creative capacity and the determination to fulfill and express it the determination to fulfill and express it and as I was backstage listening to acceptances from tonight's honorees and I congratulate you all I am really honored to be among you it is really well I am trying to be regal can you tell composed and regal well this was the lesson that I was being given at home that human potential is to be recognized and realized and that there is this group of women this auspicious group of women who were determined to see this through the theater by nurturing and supporting another simply because it is our nature to do so is phenomenal I thank you with all my heart I thank you I can't take much more of this welcome now to introduce a new initiative and thank you thank you thank both of you thank both of you now to introduce a new initiative co-chair of the league's advocacy committee Susan Bernfield hi friends with a brand new advocacy action that starts now right here with you and me and all of us it is called one more conversation with a nifty hashtag if that is your kind of thing I hope it is adding to the inventory that Adrian brought up here we have the many hashtags that we have now and things to say in our world so hashtag one more conversation and it is an action toward gender parity that is so easy to understand and to do we simply call for artistic directors and other decision makers in our field to have just one more conversation with a woman designer technician stage manager assistant professional before deciding who to hire by taking this repeatable vocabulary and spreading it around and we are all going to spread it around so it enters a broader conversation we are going to get theater leaders including ourselves the straightforward achievable tool they need for expanding their pool of collaborators and diversifying creative teams why just one more conversation it is a pretty reasonable request don't you think not onerous not pressured just a commitment to put a woman in the mix if that one conversation doesn't lead to a job that time your network will still have grown to include one more woman artist to recommend to others or to collaborate in the future as you know relationships are everything in our field so hashtag one more conversation has the potential for far reaching long term impact and it is kind of a nice step to get our inclusion writers into a measure okay so we're ready for take off let's take some theater women action right now and get spreading take out your phone I brought mine all the way on stage and you had it sort of off but maybe you've been tweeting as instructed earlier before during all this amazing awesomeness and congratulations to all of you so go to Twitter go to Instagram if you need something Instagram look oh whoa it's on the screen um use these hashtag one more conversation at L.P.T. Women snap all the amazing people on the stage tell your followers you're here for the very first conversation about hashtag one more conversation here we go you can say I am launching one more conversation use the hashtag included at L.P.T. Women let's get talking before you're done tweeting the incredible forensic yeah is gonna take this out we'll see you in the lobby thank you Susan please keep one more conversation in mind as you join our honorees and let's let's have one more round of applause amazing amazing women and few men um it will be hopefully in the lobby for a champagne toast who knows maybe the woman standing next to you is exactly who you need to be working with have a great evening congratulations felicitaciones to all of the awardees uh thank you to Rasharda Abrams thank you to our presenters, league members sponsors, volunteers and supporters and now let's go